


the index of refraction

by syzygysm



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Kink Meme, Underage - Freeform, always-a-girl-Eames
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-13
Updated: 2011-07-13
Packaged: 2017-10-21 08:52:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syzygysm/pseuds/syzygysm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What do you do?" Arthur asks.</p><p>"I'm in the business of selling lies," Eames says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the index of refraction

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: always-a-girl-Eames, underage
> 
> Thank you: so, so much to dialectical for the thorough beta this so desperate required

The thing about mirrors, Eames thinks, is that one – just one – tells the truth. But if you put two of them together – or three or four or five – they lie. They turn three dimensions into four, make the expensive silk hem of your skirt look cheap, dangle you out on that edge of beautiful-ugly. The old look older and the young look younger; the beautiful are reduced to obscenely glossy red mouths, to stark bones and jagged lines. And a casino that sits on the outskirts of a city pretends at opulence, because two mirrors show decadence while one, just one, shows decay.

“Clever,” Eames says and drinks her shitty vodka.

“Sorry?

“The mirrors,” she says. “They almost make you forget the fact that you’re drinking watered down vodka and eating peanuts that have been sitting out for weeks.” She tilts her head to the right. “See that woman sitting over there? With the sapphire necklace that glitters so bright it looks fake?”

“Yes.”

“That’s because it’s fake,” she says and slants a sideways look at him. “And then there’s you.”

“Me,” he says and lights a cigarette. It flares blue-gold.

“Twenty,” she says, watching him carefully curl his mouth around it, the overhead lights haloing him in phosphorescent blues. His sleeves are rolled up, and that’s a mistake, she thinks, because the curves of his wrists are delicate enough that she can see the fragile web of bluish veins there, the pale skin laid bare. His fingers are a little too slim and his shirt a little too big and that’s the second mistake, showing what you should hide and hiding what you should show.

“Twenty-one, maybe,” she says and slides a finger around the rim of her glass. “That’s what the barkeeper thinks, anyway. Almost legal, and let’s be honest: there’s a thin line between legal and almost legal in this place. And what you can’t hide with a shirt that’s probably your older brother’s, the smoke and mirrors do for you.”

She reaches out, takes the cigarette from him. He lets her have it.

“Seventeen,” she says, considering him. “Eighteen, at the most.”

He looks at her and she thinks that if the poker chips in her purse were real, she’d bet on seventeen. It’s something about the shape of his mouth, the way his hair is slicked back, military-severe. He’s all sharp angles, the starched white of his shirt revealing the silhouette of long lines underneath. There’s a knot of a shadow where his shirt opens to a white, white triangle of skin at the base of his throat. Fascinating, Eames thinks.

He swallows, just once, then says evenly, “Are you going to have me thrown out?”

“Hmm,” Eames says and puts out the cigarette. “Tell you what. Buy me another drink and we’ll see.”

He watches the strap of her dress give, slip off her shoulder. Eames doesn’t pull it back up.

“Yeah,” he says. “All right.”

 

 

+

 

 

“I’m Eames,” she says when she’s got her drink.

“Is this where I give you a fake name in return?” he says and she thinks, definitely seventeen.

“If you like,” she says generously.

He curls his hand around his wine glass. It’s more than half full, terrible in the same way the carpet is worn bare in patches or the way the dice at the craps table probably came from a Monopoly game. And that’s interesting, Eames thinks, because why else does a seventeen-year-old sneak into a bar?

“It’s Arthur,” he says, a little challenging.

“How dull,” Eames says. “Although in line with the fact that you’re sorely lacking in imagination.”

There’s a blush starting at his neck, sweeping over the line of his jaw, and that’s – even more interesting, Eames thinks, taken together with how he’s virtuously not looking at the way Eames’ skirt has ridden high, showing skin that should really be winter-pale and is sun-warmed gold instead.

“That’s my real name,” Arthur says, flat.

“Well,” Eames says and takes a drink. “Exactly.”

 

 

+

 

 

“What do you do?” Arthur asks. His mouth is sticky-sweet with wine.

“I’m in the business of selling lies,” Eames says, and if that’s one of her rare truths – well.

 

 

+

 

 

“Why are you talking to me?” Arthur says, consonants unraveling.

“What else should I be doing?” Eames asks, curious.

Arthur shrugs a shoulder. Eames watches the cotton of his shirt stretch and then ruffle. “That guy over there has been eyeing you for the last hour. He’s wearing a Rolex—”

“It’s a Cartier, actually,” Eames says. “But I concede your point.”

“And you look—”

“What?” Eames says. “How do I look, Arthur?”

Arthur looks away. “You know what you look like.”

“Flatterer,” Eames says, but leans over, presses her mouth to his ear. “Look in the mirror.”

It takes Arthur one long moment to obey, seconds that stretch minutes into hours.

“Look at what a pretty pair we make,” she says, because they do: Arthur, who looks younger and younger as the night winds down, and Eames, whose claws can never be folded away for all that long.

Arthur turns his face towards her. Eames’ breath skitters a hot line across his cheek, against his mouth.

“Are you flirting with me, Ms. Eames,” Arthur murmurs, catching her wrist.

“Was I that obvious,” Eames says and kisses him.

 

 

+

 

 

She takes him to the flat she rents whenever she’s in Vegas.

“It’s nice,” Arthur says. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, looking enormously uncertain. His shirt is unbuttoned all the way down his chest, showing off pretty skin, and his mouth is red as sin.

“I like it,” Eames says and turns around. “Unzip me.”

Arthur’s fingers are almost agonizingly slow as he presses a line of kisses along newly bared skin. The zipper ends just where the lace of her underwear begins, and Arthur’s teeth catch in it, teasing.

“Have you done this before?” Eames asks, stepping out of her dress, kicking it aside.

Arthur leans back on his elbows, parts his thighs a little. “What do you think?”

Eames takes her heels off, one at a time. “I think,” she says and watches Arthur’s eyes go hooded. “I think that the reason you snuck into that casino tonight is because you want to get fucked. Maybe there’s a girl at your school who you like, maybe you’ve made out with her a couple of times in the backseat of your car. Maybe she’s let you touch her a little through her pretty pink bra, but she won’t let you go any further. And I think,” Eames says and straddles Arthur’s hips, presses deliberately down. Arthur goes utterly loose-limbed, tips his head back, a ragged moan knifing out of him. “I think,” she says, “that you _need_ to get fucked, don’t you, Arthur? You need it so, so badly.”

Arthur slits his eyes open and smiles.

 

+

 

 

“I want to eat you out,” Arthur says, desperate. His hair is a mess, thick with gel and clean sweat, and there’s the beginnings of a bruise on his neck where it slopes down to meet his shoulder. It’s too hot – Eames always forgets that Vegas is a little bit wrong, a flood of electricity surrounded by desert – but Arthur is pressed up against her anyway, his fingers insistently coaxing her legs apart.

“Mmm,” Eames says, drags her hand through Arthur’s hair. “We’re not all seventeen. I don’t think I can—”

“Try harder,” Arthur suggests and Eames is about to protest, but then Arthur’s licking into her, kittenish little licks, and she’s too sore, really, but she’s also pliant from one too many glasses of vodka. And Arthur is eager to please, his thumb digging hard enough against her clit that her hips buck; he lifts his head, eyes lit dark with intent, mouth gleaming messy-wet, and says, “You look so good like this, I could do this forever—”

—and Eames comes right then, the orgasm shocked out of her.

 

 

+

 

 

“Can I,” Arthur says, voice rough as silk. He’s braced over her, hips rolling against hers, skin flushed dark. His cock is hard, _so_ hard, and this is, what, Eames thinks, tries to count, the fourth time – and Arthur is almost pleading, face cracked wide open. “Can I fuck you again,” he mumbles into her neck, and Eames should probably say no because it’s almost five o’clock and the room has gone grey with the promise of dawn and she has somewhere she has to be in three hours, but Arthur tastes like smoke and wine, is all sleek skin, and so she curls her fingers around his cock, slick and rosy red and beautiful.

 

 

+

 

 

In the morning, both Arthur and the Chagall that was stashed under the bed, waiting to be turned over to her client in one hour – both of them are gone.

“Shit,” Eames says. “Shit, shit, _shit_.”

There’s a note taped to the vanity mirror:

 _The thing about mirrors, Ms. Eames, is that if you pay too much attention to them, you might miss what’s happening right in front of you._

“Fuck,” Eames says and looks in the mirror, remembering the way Arthur had looked when he’d come, his body arching in a series of perfect sine waves. Her hair is knotted from where Arthur had tangled his fingers in it, holding on too tightly, and there’s a blur of pink lipstick across the pillowcase, the result of Arthur pushing her down into the bed and slowly fucking in from behind.

(Have you done this before, she’d asked.

What do you think, he’d said.)

“Fuck,” Eames says again. And then she smiles.

 

 

+


End file.
